Voice Casts: In Verbis Virtus

I am Glaswegian, so I’ve been born with -10 on my Voice Recognition stat. It’s an affliction that has led to humiliation on the phone to banks, at Kinect parties (in my defense, I was told it was going to be an orgy), and in front of Siri and her smug chums. Despite this torment, I downloaded the In Verbis Virtus demo and prepared for the worst. It’s fantasy puzzle game where the majority of the commands are uttered instead of clicked. I was surprised as anyone when I said “Let There Be Light” and a glow lit up the surrounding area.
I played for a few minutes, and each time it asked me to speak the spell it really worked. The only time it flubbed it was because I’m so befuddled by cold medicine that I kept mixing up my mouse buttons. That’s actually more impressive: a cold removes two more points from my stats. At first I though it was a fluke, but the first two spells cast light: one in a diffuse ball, the other in a beam. Both require you to say “Light” as part of the spell, and both times the word comes at the end of the casting. It never once mixed the two up.

Where it goes from here depends on the puzzle design, which is already polished, and in making it more than just a replacement for button-pressing. I’ve not seen much that couldn’t be achieved with the keyboard and mouse, but developers Indomitus Games are promising that they’ll build the game around vocals. Download the demo here.